Equity Office Gets Green

Boston's largest property owner, Equity Office Property Trust (affiliated with the Blackstone Group), has plans to green up its buildings, adding bike racks and energy efficient climate control systems to help the earth and make us feel warm and fuzzy. Boston is the beginning of the company's experiment with green touches, which may be extended to other areas. The city requires new construction to be LEED certified (though not to the gold level, like the Macallen Building), but we have so many existing buildings that the requirement hasn't had much impact. Equity Office and Boston Properties Inc. are among the first to start renovating existing buildings. There's high demand among companies for green touches, and greening a building can even improve worker productivity, so it looks like this may become a trend.

We think it's very nice of office building owners to become environmentally friendly--but wouldn't it be ideal if all of us could just work at home in our jammies? No polluting commute, no giant buildings with giant carbon footprints--think about it, Equity Office. You could subsidize home offices! We know the bloggers will be all for it.